"Inequality at birth is neither just nor unjust. What's just and unjust is the way institutions deal with it" - John Rawls

"I always had a certain dislike for general principles and abstract prescriptions. I think it's necessary to have an "empirical lantern" or a "visit with the patient" before being able to understand what is wrong with him. It is crucial to understand the peculiarity, the specificity, and also the unusual aspects of the case" - Albert O. Hirschman

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[38th post in the 'Ensuring a Learning India' series. 42 posts in total. One post per day. 4 more to go]

This
section builds a framework for school education reform in India. In previous
sections, we have discussed many issues and possible solutions, then why this? Though it is necessary to know
the issues, possible approaches for solutions, it is equally important to look
at all of them from a broader perspective, fitting them in to a framework. This
gives us a sense of ‘why’, and help us work in the inter linkages of each. As
evident, most of the individual aspects mentioned in this sections are
discussed elsewhere above where context, evidence and the questions of why
& how are answered there. Hence I am assuming that the reader of this
section has a background of this.

At times, it appears that the
perennial debates on school education reform are struck in a low level and
dangerous yet comfortable equilibrium. The public schools aren’t being
effective and we don’t seem to have ways to fix them at least in short term but
then we don’t want to rely on private schools either. We are in a comfortable
situation saying – public schools don’t work and private schools don’t work.
Teachers have perfect alibi systems – infrastructure, unmotivated students and
parents have perfect alibi – unmotivated and irregular teachers. Any initiative
to incentivize students to propel themselves is met with a criticism of
pressure on students and any initiative to make teachers accountable is met
with criticisms of teaching to the test etc. In contexts of weak state capacity
like ours, too much autonomy can turn out to be ineffective but then any
efforts to standardize certain procedures are resisted arguing that teaching
students isn’t equivalent to producing goods in an assembly line.

In these perennial debates, we
neither seem to know how to fix this system nor are we trying out anything.
It’s a sad state of pessimistic equilibrium - pessimism about the state of
education system and pessimism about the ideas, leading to excessive analysis
and paralysis of action. It appears as if Sir Humphrey Appleby of the famous
Yes Minister series is manifested in all of us, ensuring that enough hurdles
are put so that the status quo is maintained. (Yes Minister is a popular
British comedy TV series where Sir Humphrey Appleby is a bureaucrat to a minister.
He is known for his bureaucratic arguments and stalling everything that the
minister wants to do.)

The opportunity costs of such
low-level equilibrium status quo situation are higher. We obviously can’t
afford it and we have to do something about it. So, what should be done about
it? An obvious guess to this question is – go for a middle path. We need to
mend the following approaches in our debates in order to be able to find a
middle path.

One, we should stop looking at
everything as ‘either or’ situation. If girl students are given bicycles to
increase access to secondary schools then the argument is, ‘Oh, but that
doesn’t result in outcomes and nothing is being done about teacher absence or
pedagogy etc’. Giving bicycles doesn’t mean that others aren’t being done. We
need both.

Two, we need to judge initiatives
by appropriate. Just like listening to a teacher needn’t improve nutrition,
giving nutritious food needn’t improve the subject knowledge. So, instead of
arguing that schemes like mid-day meals don’t improve outcomes and hence are
useless, one should better ask if midday meals affect enrollments or improve
nutrition of children etc. When everything is a necessary condition, all of
them can’t be judged by learning outcomes alone. In the absence of effects on
learning outcomes, the intermediate effects are the better metrics to be judged
up on.

Three, we should stop looking at every
initiative as possibly helping everyone. Some argue, intrinsic motivation is
needed to learn through technology tools and hence can’t help every student.
It’s fine if technology isn’t able to help non-intrinsically motivated students
but at least it is bettering the situation of the motivated students. At least,
let these kids take an advantage of it. We always keep saying that there aren’t
no silver bullets but often forget when comes to judging interventions. This
world isn’t in a perfectly ordered state where one intervention or product can
be effective everywhere. It is inform of clusters and these products can be
effective for some clusters and hence we should let these products better the
condition of these clusters and not reject them because they aren’t helping
every cluster.

Four, instead of endlessly
listing negatives of every idea or dismissing the possibility of negative
effects we should acknowledge the genuine negative effects and see if there are
ways to cushion them. The typical response to any new idea is to comment on,
why it won’t work and the possible hurdles. These turn out to be reasons to
reject the ideas. Theoretically, one can give an endless list of hurdles and negative
aspects for every idea and in environment of excessive analysis and paralysis
of action; it is easy to strike down every idea due to theoretical concerns,
some of which may be true and some may not be. On the other hand, the
proponents of the idea dismiss every possibility of a negative effect. This
also fixes us in another low level dangerous equilibrium. The solution here is
not to accept every idea but to intelligently categorize the concerns. In
simple words, doing a cost vs. benefit analysis instead of a just cost
analysis. If the idea is worth trying out, then we should acknowledge the genuine
concerns and think of possible ways to cushion the negative effects instead of
burying down the idea due to theoretical concerns.

Hoping that this will at least
resolve some part of the dead-lock and budge the status quo, let’s return to
our framework. In a detailed discussion over multiple sections, we have
realized that weak state capacity is the critical constraint in Indian public
school system, as of today. This can be the anchor node for our reform
framework. This state capacity can be again defined in several ways – the
capability to implement policies, the intent to implement (having capability
isn’t enough, one should also have the intent) and the much broader definition
being, the capability to identify issues and address them. In whichever way we
use it, our framework will be built with this as the anchor node.

Recognizing that weak state
capacity is one of the major hurdles. Figuring out what to do about are the
next. We then discussed the concept of iterative adaptation and the necessity
of focus and execution to successfully implement a policy.

On focus – we discussed that when
a person is overburdened with multiple tasks, then that person tends to work
towards ensuring that the worse doesn’t happen (by just trouble shooting urgent
issues) and not try to excel at them. In this process, some tasks which are
high on the priority list from the perspective of the system can go down the
priority list of the person. If this is the situation then consolidation is the
first step to bring back the focus.

The famous tale of the Apple Company
can help us understand this better. Around 1990, Apple was on the verge of
bankruptcy but then it picked up again. What has happened? There can be various
possible factors responsible for this but one of the first decisions that the
company took was to cut down its products. It is said that, Apple had 90 products
at that point of time. It cut down its products to 5, a mere 5. This reduces
burden and helps the company focus and do few things better rather than
spreading oneself thin and failing at everything. Of course this doesn’t mean
that one should do only limited number of things but the point is that this
number should be proportional to the strength.

Similarly, the first task to an
overburdened bureaucracy is to cut down as Apple did. The challenge here being,
Apple could cut down its products but government can’t afford to do that.
Imagine if government were to say, I am consolidating and hence removing
education from my responsibilities. It is still possible for government to cut
down, while still obliging its responsibilities, by devoluting and seeking
assistance. It means that instead of either doing itself, it can either
devolute the responsibility depending on the nature of the task to the lower
levels or seek external assistance and just monitor the outcomes. We have
discussed a great deal about arguments about devolution and aspects that can be
devolved.

If one has to cut down the
responsibilities of a state government, what are the concrete tasks that can be
cut down which will ease significant space? - Teacher trainings, teacher
transfers, recruitment (except design of paper) and procurement. Here again, we
discussed the rationale behind each of these in relevant sections above. In
summary - teacher trainings require iterative adaptation and hence are best at
local level, instead of trying to do it centrally better to let it be done by
district level, and also giving them flexibility to involve external
organizations; teacher transfers and recruitment are unnecessary burden on
state government, which is also causing delays and inefficiencies.

On execution – We discussed that
there should be long term support structures in place for successful execution
of programs. This does sound like an obvious and abstract idea but it reminds
me of a story by Dr. Atul Gawande.

Dr. Atul Gawande is a famous
public health specialist and surgeon in US and a distinguished author. He was
once curious to know the percentage of surgery deaths which were because of
complications about which we don’t have knowledge and the percentage of surgery
deaths which were because of errors, the ones for which we had the knowledge
but couldn’t handle it. Surprisingly, he found that 2/3rds of the surgery
deaths were due to errors and that was an astonishingly high number. He figured
out that having a simple checklist of things to be done in a surgical room can
be an effective way to reduce these deaths. Their team piloted it in several
places, publicized it and it was implemented in several hospitals across
countries. He particularly notes the experience of Canada and Scotland about
its effectiveness. In Canada, it was mandated to have this checklist and all
hospitals agreed to it but then there was no reduction of deaths after 3
months. The sad part in education is that we don’t even have such data to track
the effectiveness of interventions. While, there was a significant reduction in
Scotland. He notes that while the regulation was there on paper, there were no
proper implementation support systems. What does that mean? In Scotland, there
were team of professionals, who would regularly visit hospitals, ask their
difficulties in adhering to the checklist, coach them accordingly and it took
them 3 years to bring the cultural change of just adhering to check lists. This
is the type of long term commitment, focus and support needed, which is broadly
called execution.

In simple words, figuring out how
to do may be as difficult as figuring out what to do.

Devolution and seeking assistance
give space to execute and the long term commitment and support helps in
execution. The question over execution is bit ironical. On hand, we say that we
have a weak state capacity, meaning that we have weak capacity to execute
policies. On the other hand, we say that we need to execute. How do we
reconcile this dilemma? The first part of the answer to this question, cutting
down to create space for focus, is already discussed. The second part of the
answer is, to just execute, as surprising as it sounds. This is similar to the
question of, how do we make a person who is not being able to walk (due to a
recoverable injury) to stand up and walk again? – By setting small goals and a continuous
practice to achieve them, thereby building the capacity to walk. We need to use
a similar approach here too – pick up limited number of aspects, focus and
ensure that they are implemented well. This is helpful in two ways. One, when
one involves people in executing something seriously and make it a success, it
breaks the lethargy cycle if any and also builds confidence, capability and
skills in the system to face and address the issues common to execution across
different problems. The next logical question is - what are those issues that
can be picked up to be executed?

1.Address problems as perceived
by teacher problems in a time bound manner – The first part of the strategy to
reform school education should be to bring teachers on board, consider them as
partners in the reform process. Addressing the problems as perceived by
teachers can be a good way to bring them on board. When one visits a school and
teacher narrates a list of their problems and shows proof to some of those, it
is hard to deny those realities. It is hard to tell them in that context that
they should be accountable for the results. It is also hard to also make
statements like, evidence doesn’t say that improving PTR necessarily improve
outcomes. Some of these concerns may be true and some of which may be false and
some of which may look as constraints now but there might not be effect even
after resolving those. So, the first priority should to be to address these.

How to address this? The first
step obviously is to make a list of their problems by asking them. We don’t
know the last time teachers were asked about their problems and were solved.
Devolve some of the responsibilities to districts so that they don’t blame
state government for everything and then resolve others in a time bound manner.
This ensures that teachers feel empowered that their concerns are being
listened. The immediate results may not show up in evaluations but is essential
and along with other interventions can help in achieving the goals. This may be
a technical reform but a reform strategy.

2. Credible
assessment systems – We discussed the importance of assessments at a systemic
level (not for classroom purposes) several times in earlier sections. In
summary - One, when systems approach towards diversity or decentralization,
monitoring outcomes becomes essential.
Two, assessments bridge the information asymmetries in education. Three,
assessments also signal expectations of system from the schools and students.
Four, credible assessments are crucial in initiatives like teacher incentives
and school certifications.

There is one other important
reason for the availability of student level quality assessment data – keeping
track of progress and assessing the results of interventions. For example, RtE (2009)
mandates 25% reservation for kids of low income communities in private schools.
Do we if it has helped these kids? One credible way to test this could be to
measure the outcomes of students in the school that these kids might have gone
to if not for this private school and compare it with their scores. Subjected
to certain caveats, this can give us some useful information. Today, if one
wants to do that, it is not possible unless one goes through the painful
process of securing permissions and administering these tests.

Many state boards today don’t
have the necessary capacity to build such credible scientific assessments and
analyze them. State governments should invest in this and ensure that high
quality teams are built around this.

Administering these assessments
also needs capacity and has to be worked upon.

3. Efficient systems for fund flowand improving process efficiency– We discussed the process efficiencies as shown by PAISA studies and the
delays in fund flows. These are process level issues, addressing which is a different
type of challenge but quite doable.

4. Monitor outcomes - Developing
systems for monitoring the performance of districts. Initially simple goals of
basic numeracy and literacy for all students of grade 2 (let’s say) should be
set and ensure that it happens, monitored appropriately through credible
assessments. We can then move to higher aspects later.

5. Designing defaults – We
discussed that in the initial stages of devolution, there should be some
default prescribed practices which can act as backups when the lower levels
still don’t have the capacity to design or execute. This can be across the
other themes, assessments, pedagogy etc.

6. Teacher education – Pre-
service teacher education and also institutes for in-service training are very
crucial for capacity building of teachers. Government can ensure their quality
by either appropriately regulating them, prescribing certain reasonable
standards, helping them build capacity etc.

7. Aspects of pedagogy that need
attention – We discussed several aspects of pedagogy that need attention, in
the theme on pedagogy – curriculum – assessments; ways to translate abstract
ideas like teaching to the level of kid to instructional practices, pedagogy
research and support required for assessments and so on.

8. Designing standards for
regulation and iterating them - Standards for schools and teacher training
institutes.

9. Curriculum design - Ensuring that the curriculum is appropriate as per both the needs and capacity of the system.

10. Creating vision - Setting up
broad long term vision considering the changes in society and advancements in
technology, and incorporating them into the existing requirements.

It might seem that there is lot
of abstractness in the above ideas but the necessary details of many of these
are discussed in the relevant sections in this book. Also, part of the
challenge of strengthening the state capacity is to deal with such
abstractness.

Till now we discussed the aspects
that can be cut down to ease space for focus and aspects that can be used as
anchors to practice the skill of execution thereby building the state capacity.
Apart from these, there are some specific aspects or constraints that are to be
addressed. We already discussed the detailed regarding these in earlier
sections. They are – (i) shift focus from time-bound completion of syllabus;
(ii) teach to the right level of the kid; (iii) after-school support systems;
(iv) reform board examinations; (v) allow for-profit private schools; and (vi)
training teachers of low-cost private schools.

The first two aspects overlap
with the curriculum design and monitoring mechanisms discussed as part of the
10 points above. School Choice or Voucher program is the remaining issue in
this category. The relevant section on school choice details its nuances and
suggests way forward. One may settle for
the alternative measures of ensuring competition by legalizing for-profit
schools, building capacity of low-income private schools and so on but the discontent
towards public schools is brewing. We discussed in the section on
inert-volcanic-agitated systems framework that traditionally crisis and anchor
items were reasons for moving from one state to the other, and that there aren’t
many anchor items in education. If neglected, the discontent regarding public
schools and demand for their rights manifested in form of vouchers can turn out
to be the anchor agenda. These issues may not seem visible in normal
situations, like the case of reservations but once they break out, it’s
difficult to manage. It just needs an appropriate time and a person to mobilize
public. Hence, one should be aware and cautious about it.

We have discussed about state
governments and district administration but didn’t talk much about the union
government. As discussed in the section on reference frames of debates, role of
appropriate government is one of the confusions in the policy discourses.
Though there might be an agreement about the need to do a certain thing, one
may not agree on the implementing agency – should it be done by the union
government or state government or district administration or be left for
society to take care of it?

We have noted that weak state
capacity is the critical constraint, which is best dealt locally. However,
there are two important aspects that the union government should/can do apart
from setting the broader vision for education and certain aspects of
curriculum.

One, set the tone of education
discourse in the country - The union government should steer the education
discourse towards learning outcomes, and create an atmosphere where education
is valued in society. Increasing the societal value of education could possibly
reduce dropouts, especially in the case of girls and marginalized communities.

Two, participating in
international assessments - Countries like Poland took the PISA results in a
positive spirit and are striving to improve, while India opted out of PISA,
serving no good. Participating in such assessments gives us a clear benchmark
of where we are, where to reach, and how we are progressing over time.

Three, ensure public access to
quality data. Young Lives study
conducted by the University of Oxford recently pointed to a decrease in
learning outcomes of children. Similar trends were also pointed out by ASER.
There is currently little raw, longitudinal data on the learning outcomes of
children in India, available to public, to explore the root causes of such
serious issues. Some states get third party learning assessments done, but the
data is either not public or is scattered across. The Union government should
take an initiative to coordinate and collate quality data on learning outcomes
from across the states, and make it available to the public. This enables
policy makers to make an informed choice.

Four, monitor outcomes – We have
discussed a great deal about the need for devolution and letting states take
care of school education but what there aren’t enough efforts from some states.
We can’t let it be based on principles. This might need some external prodding
from union government in assisting them to achieve their goals.

Five, set role models – In many
aspects like quality of board examinations, curriculum design etc. union
government can set role models by implementing them in contexts where it has
powers to do so (CBSE exams, NCERT textbooks); it can also create a repository
of best practices and inspire states to follow the lead.

Finally, few words of caution. One,
School education is a complex issue and the above mentioned aspects aren’t the
only ones that have to be done. Only the macro aspects fitting into the broader
framework are discussed here. One is always welcome to innovate.

Two, these are
the things that need to be done as per the evidence and experience that we have
till now. Even after we do all this, we may figure out new challenges and still
fall short of reaching our end goal. When one puts enormous efforts it is easy
to get carried away and take these efforts as proxy for increase in outcomes,
which needn’t be the case. Regular assessments will help us to keep this in check.
We must remember that ticking off the boxes in the above check list isn’t the
final goal, ensuring learning outcomes is and hence the strategies can be
adapted as we learn new lessons but these can definitely be the starting point
for reform.

Three, we need to realize that we still don't know answers to many questions. I feel one of the common instincts of many, including me is to feel that we know the answer, or have an opinion, because dealing with uncertainty of not knowing about something for long periods of time is tiring. This may either hinder further exploration of truth or end up having incomplete conceptions, both of which aren't desirable. While we do all of these, we should remember that we still don't understand many aspects and be open to learn.